... your analogy actually describes intelligent design. You have a 3rd party to a process planning improvements (you even use the word experimenting) and thus bringing about gradual change and a more complex approach.

The analogy concerned a mousetrap, which we know isn't subject to modifications via natural processes, so your observation is moot.

Later on, in reply to Zankuu, you ask:

Quote

Do you reject the bacterial flaggellum, the eye, and blood clotting cascade examples usually given?

Several pages ago I offered you a seven-minute YouTube video in which Ken Miller debunks the bacterial flagellum example. I'm not sure if you ever watched it. There's a longer, two-hour video, of which the one I originally posted was an excerpt:

You have been provided other links concerning the notion of the irreducible complexity of the eye. Again, it's not clear from any of the past posts that you've read or watched any of the material presented to you.

And I see that William has recently posted material concerning the blood clotting cascade mechanism.

So why do you continue to assert, despite your own self-confessed lack of expertise, that these two (Sorry, three.) systems are irreducibly complex?

Later still, you say that:

Quote

It is self evident that cells are self replicating, otherwise Darwin evolution could not occur. Even if there is an intelligent designer, there is still cellular replication, so that is irrelevant to the issue of irreducible complexity.

Self replication doesn't explain how a natural process of gradual change can lead to a system that does not work if even 1 part is removed and the parts themselves are non-functional in terms of the goal function of the system of which it is a part.

The ability to self-replicate is relevant to the point in the sense that in the case of non-living objects, there exists no natural process by which you could end up with improved copies of them over time.

By contrast, in the case of living things that make somewhat-inaccurate copies of themselves, in an environment whereby natural processes determine which living things are capable of reaching maturity, finding a mate and producing offspring.

On to your second paragraph: how are you defining the 'system', a 'part' and the 'goal function of the system'? These are somewhat vague terms and it's important to pin down what you mean in order to address it usefully.

Dear DrTesla, I would like to remind you at this stage of the proceedings of the philosophical point that one only needs to conceive of a logical pathway to explain away complexity to dissolve the mystical aura of irreducible complexity. The bubble pops. Not with a bang but a fizzle.

I almost feel your pain - to have such a cherished idea dissolve in front a bunch of rude godless bastards must be almost intolerable.

But chin up, there is a path to redemption, integrity and respect. All you have to say (and be sincere about it please) is: "Thanks, I was wrong, I've learned something."

Doolittle and Feng (1987) predicted that "lower" vertebrates would lack the "contact pathway" of blood clotting. Work on the genomes of the puffer fish and zebrafish have confirmed this (Yong and Doolittle 2003).

Thank you for this. In one of my earlier drafts of my frustratingly-impossible-to-post-as-a-single-post response to DrTesla, I had added a comment that, in a somewhat hamfisted way, was groping towards the point that this model of evolutionary change that entailed that it was an inexorably bottom-up exercise, that unerringly followed only a cumulative addition of "parts", was quite far from the whole story. There is no reason why, according to the model, components cannot be modified, substituted or removed, as well as added.

In such a fashion, it is actually quite possible to envisage a scenario where, through natural processes alone, you end up with a system that qualifies as "irreducibly complex" according to Behe's (original) definition - where a system would be nonfunctional if one part were removed, but it would still be functional if you actually replayed the naturally-guided changes faithfully in reverse order to the order in which they originally took place. Given this, it becomes clear that the central premise of Behe's idea - that if we were to discover such a system in nature, it would could not possibly be the product of gradual changes via natural processes - is flawed.

So not only does IC misunderstand "design" - manufactured products are themselves often (if not always) the product of gradual changes over time, but artificially rather than naturally selected - but its premise falls flat on the simple point that it takes an extremely narrow view of the range of natural changes that can take place.

It does however mean that one route by which evolutionary Theory might be falsified, turns out to be a dead end. Cheerfully, it's not the only route by which evolutionary Theory might be falsified, so Popper isn't going to come back to haunt us just yet.

.... There is no reason why, according to the model, components cannot be modified, substituted or removed, as well as added.

.... the simple point that it takes an extremely narrow view of the range of natural changes that can take place.

So eloquently put DeM, I'm sure even DrT can comprehend that.

Why is it that so many people fighting with evolution have this idea that it's all about one little measly mutation at a time. And from the way they talk you'd think there's only one single copy of the genome available for the process. No comprehension of the way genetic information has been batted around (even between species), used and abused, lost and found, hijacked etc. No comprehension of population sizes. No comprehension of geological time and the generations upon generations upon generations.

Instead we get basically the same fucking whine: "Where did the information come from? Mutation isn't sufficient!"

Of course mutation alone is insufficient - but that's not nearly all there is!

Irreducible Complexity is an Obstacle to Darwinism Even if Parts of a System have other Functions:A Response to Sharon Begley's Wall Street Journal ColumnBy: Michael J. BeheDiscovery InstituteFebruary 18, 2004

In a recent column in the Wall Street Journal (February 13, 2004, Science Journal, page B1, "Evolution Critics Come Under Fire for Flaws In 'Intelligent Design'") science writer Sharon Begley repeated some false claims about the concept of irreducible complexity (IC) that have been made by Darwinists, in particular by Kenneth Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University. After giving a serviceable description in her column of why I argue that a mousetrap is IC, Begley added the Darwinist poison pill to the concept. The key misleading assertion in the article is the following: "Moreover, the individual parts of complex structures supposedly serve no function." In other words, opponents of design want to assert that if the individual parts of a putatively IC structure can be used for anything at all other than their role in the system under consideration, then the system itself is not IC. So, for example, Kenneth Miller has seriously argued that a part of a mousetrap could be used as a paperweight, so not even a mousetrap is IC. Now, anything that has mass could be used as a paperweight. Thus by Miller's tendentious reasoning any part of any system at all has a separate "function". Presto! There is no such thing as irreducible complexity

The system can have its own function, different from any of the parts. Any individual function of a part does not explain the separate function of the system.

Miller applies his crackerjack reasoning not only to the mousetrap, but also to the bacterial flagellum—the extremely sophisticated, ultra complex biological outboard motor that bacteria use to swim, which I had discussed in Darwin's Black Box and which has becoming something of a poster child for intelligent design. No wonder, since anyone looking at a drawing of the flagellum immediately apprehends the design. Since the flagellum is such an embarrassment to the Darwinian project, Miller tries to distract attention from its manifest design by pointing out that parts of the structure can have functions other than propulsion. In particular, some parts of the flagellum act as a protein pump, allowing the flagellum to aid in its own construction—a level of complexity that was unsuspected until relatively recently.

Miller's argument is that since a subset of the proteins of the flagellum can have a function of their own, then the flagellum is not IC and Darwinian evolution could produce it. That's it! He doesn't show how natural selection could do so; he doesn't cite experiments showing that such a thing is possible; he doesn't give a theoretical model. He just points to the greater-than-expected complexity of the flagellum (which Darwinists did not predict or expect) and declares that Darwinian processes could produce it. This is clearly not a fellow who wants to look into the topic too closely.

In fact, the function of a pump has essentially nothing to do with the function of the system to act as a rotary propulsion device, anymore than the ability of parts of a mousetrap to act as paperweights has to do with the trap function. And the existence of the ability to pump proteins tells us nil about how the rotary propulsion function might come to be in a Darwinian fashion. For example, suppose that the same parts of the flagellum that were unexpectedly discovered to act as a protein pump were instead unexpectedly discovered to be, say, a chemical factory for synthesizing membrane lipids. Would that alternative discovery affect Kenneth Miller's reasoning at all? Not in the least. His reasoning would still be simply that a part of the flagellum had a separate function. But how would a lipid-making factory explain rotary propulsion? In the same way that protein pumping explains it—it doesn't explain it at all.

« Last Edit: October 23, 2013, 07:08:27 PM by DrTesla »

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"You want to know who just loves abortions? God loves abortions. He performs them all the time and not even for the money. " NoGodsForMe

"I wish it was men who got pregnant b/c we would squirt out these babies and go about our business. We don't have be divas on this stuff." DrTesla

Anyone is 'easy' to discredit if you're willing to be dishonest enough, DrTesla.

By the way, did you know that Behe originally insisted that clotting HAD to be irreducibly complex? Yet he finally admitted that it isn't. You know who pressed him to admit it? Kenneth Miller.

So much for your assertion that Miller is easy to discredit. Indeed, whenever Behe has been pressed sufficiently on claims that he hopes will not pass muster, he will - reluctantly - admit that he's wrong about them.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

And why is this Tesla guy not down to -1000 yet for all his ignorance, dishonesty, not reading other people's posts, and expecting everyone to be impressed by his posts. After five days, -1000 is too lenient.

Anyone is 'easy' to discredit if you're willing to be dishonest enough, DrTesla.

By the way, did you know that Behe originally insisted that clotting HAD to be irreducibly complex? Yet he finally admitted that it isn't. You know who pressed him to admit it? Kenneth Miller.

So much for your assertion that Miller is easy to discredit. Indeed, whenever Behe has been pressed sufficiently on claims that he hopes will not pass muster, he will - reluctantly - admit that he's wrong about them.

@Jaime

I will have to research your assertion re: blood clotting cascade

So you think Miller has a point when he suggests that a system isn't IC if the parts have a function when they are apart from the system, even if the part alone function has nothing to do with the system function?

But if Miller's point about the mouse trap analogy and then the bacterial flaggelum are clearly wrong and don't really even address IC, then why should we expect he will be right about blood clotting cascade not being irreducibly complex.

« Last Edit: October 23, 2013, 07:37:11 PM by DrTesla »

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"You want to know who just loves abortions? God loves abortions. He performs them all the time and not even for the money. " NoGodsForMe

"I wish it was men who got pregnant b/c we would squirt out these babies and go about our business. We don't have be divas on this stuff." DrTesla

I will have to guess the answer to your "research" before you do it. After a great deal of mental effort lasting several seconds, you will decide that you don't like it.

Well consider this:

If you remove one part from a system, shouldn't it still function like the end state system does, just at a more primitive level? If Darwin evolution theory is legit. You wouldn't think it would fail immediately after 1 part is removed. It would just be a gradual reduction in the scope of the system function as you removed each part. Does that make sense?

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"You want to know who just loves abortions? God loves abortions. He performs them all the time and not even for the money. " NoGodsForMe

"I wish it was men who got pregnant b/c we would squirt out these babies and go about our business. We don't have be divas on this stuff." DrTesla

So you think Miller has a point when he suggests that a system isn't IC if the parts have a function when they are apart from the system, even if the part alone function has nothing to do with the system function?

Of course I do. Evolution isn't about progressing towards a defined goal, like design is. It's about an organism surviving long enough to reproduce. Whatever enhances that ability, or at least doesn't take away from it, tends to be conserved. And that means sometimes you get fortuitous combinations of beneficial traits that were never planned to begin with.

It's little different than rolling a twenty-sided dice and getting 20 twice in a row, except for the magnitude of the odds.

Quote from: DrTesla

But if Miller's point about the mouse trap analogy and then the bacterial flaggelum are clearly wrong and don't really even address IC, then why should we expect he will be right about blood clotting cascade not being irreducibly complex.

Well, since Behe himself admitted that the blood clotting cascade was not irreducibly complex, that means he acknowledged that Miller was right about it. And that means that Behe could easily be wrong about the bacterial flagellum. And the mousetrap too, although since a mousetrap is constructed and doesn't evolve on its own, it's not a good analogy for biology to begin with.

If you remove one part from a system, shouldn't it still function like the end state system does, just at a more primitive level? If Darwin evolution theory is legit. You wouldn't think it would fail immediately after 1 part is removed. It would just be a gradual reduction in the scope of the system function as you removed each part. Does that make sense?

Evolution isn't about randomly removing a 'part' from an organism, though, which is why Behe's irreducible complexity argument doesn't work. It's about finding things that enhance the ability of an organism to survive long enough to reproduce. Sometimes that happens through adding something that gives the organism something new, sometimes that happens by removing something that isn't very efficient from the organism, and sometimes that happens through modifying an existing thing that the organism already has.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

I will have to guess the answer to your "research" before you do it. After a great deal of mental effort lasting several seconds, you will decide that you don't like it.

Well consider this:

If you remove one part from a system, shouldn't it still function like the end state system does, just at a more primitive level? If Darwin evolution theory is legit. You wouldn't think it would fail immediately after 1 part is removed. It would just be a gradual reduction in the scope of the system function as you removed each part. Does that make sense?

No, in small animals both the form and function of organs need not be the same as they evolve into large animals. Small animals do not need the same organs as large animals.

lol, Jaime, nobody is saying evolution is about losing a part. The point is that IF a system were to lose a part, the remaining parts ought to have some type of functionality in relation to the end state system functionality. In a IC system, the remaining parts would have no functionality when the 1 part is removed. The whole system fails at once, so how could the system been produced in a gradual way if all it takes is 1 part not working for the whole thing to shut down completely. In other words, the entire group of parts had to come together at once and be assembled in a logical way to work with each other to fulfill the function of the system.

it seems like we continue to talk past each other.

« Last Edit: October 23, 2013, 08:04:15 PM by DrTesla »

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"You want to know who just loves abortions? God loves abortions. He performs them all the time and not even for the money. " NoGodsForMe

"I wish it was men who got pregnant b/c we would squirt out these babies and go about our business. We don't have be divas on this stuff." DrTesla

lol, Jaime, nobody is saying evolution is about losing a part. The point is that when a system loses a part, the remaining parts ought to have some type of functionality in relation to the end state system functionality. In a IC system, the remaining parts would have no functionality when the 1 part is removed. The whole system fails at once, so how could the system been produced in a gradual way if all it takes is 1 part not working for the whole thing to shut down completely. In other words, the entire group of parts had to come together at once and be assembled in a logical way to work with each other to fulfill the function of the system.

it seems like we continue to talk past each other.

You are thinking from the present backwards. Try thinking from the past to the present or from small animal to large.

lol, I guess i'm going to have to give up. It just seems like if a system would become non-functional if 1 part was not there, then there was never any beneficial random mutation that nature could have selected to lead up to that end state. There needs to be a beneficial function of some sort for nature to select throughout the process of Darwin evolution. That is what Behe is getting at. Otherwise , the entire system has to be assembled at once and obviously that sounds like intelligent design.

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"You want to know who just loves abortions? God loves abortions. He performs them all the time and not even for the money. " NoGodsForMe

"I wish it was men who got pregnant b/c we would squirt out these babies and go about our business. We don't have be divas on this stuff." DrTesla

lol, I guess i'm going to have to give up. It just seems like if a system would become non-functional if 1 part was not there, then there was never any beneficial random mutation that nature could have selected to lead up to that end state. There needs to be a beneficial function of some sort for nature to select throughout the process of Darwin evolution. That is what Behe is getting at. Otherwise , the entire system has to be assembled at once and obviously that sounds like intelligent design.

I think you will have to give up. The subject is too difficult for you.

If you remove one part from a system, shouldn't it still function like the end state system does, just at a more primitive level? If Darwin evolution theory is legit. You wouldn't think it would fail immediately after 1 part is removed. It would just be a gradual reduction in the scope of the system function as you removed each part. Does that make sense?

No. If I take a kitten and cut off a leg, it will still be a kitten. I can cut out parts of its brain and it will still be a kitten. Even parts of its heart and liver and it still will be. But where does God come into it?

If you are suggesting that a kitten won't live without a liver, and the liver is complex, therefore "God did it", then this is ignorance. The liver developed from a primitive organ alongside its owner. In primitive form it would do some of the same things as a liver but mutations improved it and thus the chances of survival of its owner.

"AH!" I hear you say, "Was there a creature without a liver?" And I reply, "Yes - some are around today and their ancestors are in the fossil record.""What about the liver!!!???!!111!""Meah, probably a small mutation of a few cells of the gut wall that allowed digestion of some fatty acids thus allowing the creature to make more use of its food and/or widen its buffet. Thus it became more likely to live to breed and pass on its genes. I'm not saying that happened, but it makes sense, doesn't it?"

"Meah, probably a small mutation of a few cells of the gut wall that allowed digestion of some fatty acids thus allowing the creature to make more use of its food and/or widen its buffet. Thus it became more likely to live to breed and pass on its genes. I'm not saying that happened, but it makes sense, doesn't it?"

Sorry if this is a very ignorant question: If a creature developed this primitive liver by way of a mutation (and I confess I don't really know what that means), doesn't that suggest the creature was born without the mutation, and therefore it wouldn't be in its genes to pass on?

Sorry if this is a very ignorant question: If a creature developed this primitive liver by way of a mutation (and I confess I don't really know what that means), doesn't that suggest the creature was born without the mutation, and therefore it wouldn't be in its genes to pass on?

*faceplanet*Where and when exactly do you think the mutation occurs?

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My names are many, yet I am One.-Orion, son of Fire and Light, Sol Invictus.

Sorry if this is a very ignorant question: If a creature developed this primitive liver by way of a mutation (and I confess I don't really know what that means), doesn't that suggest the creature was born without the mutation, and therefore it wouldn't be in its genes to pass on?

If you actually want to discuss evolution, please, please, please read this thread first. Just skim for links and follow a few of them (and read what's on the other end too please), so we can all be discussing the same thing before we start.

If you are interested, and only because I like you, I'll even send you some info from the biology class I'm taking this semester that will give you a good place to start. Let me know if you want it - I can PM it to you.

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"Tell people that there's an invisible man in the sky that created the entire universe and the majority believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure." ~George Carlin

If you actually want to discuss evolution, please, please, please read this thread first. Just skim for links and follow a few of them (and read what's on the other end too please), so we can all be discussing the same thing before we start.

If you are interested, and only because I like you, I'll even send you some info from the biology class I'm taking this semester that will give you a good place to start. Let me know if you want it - I can PM it to you.

LOL, I don't have the time or scientific nous to get much involved. I just read things quickly and sometimes questions pop into my head, like this one. I appreciate its probably not simple enough to just answer quickly.

As it happens, my wife is ploughing through a medical laboratory degree and got the highest possible mark for biology (and every other subject actually, so far. Smart woman). So she can explain this to me sometime.

lol, I guess i'm going to have to give up. It just seems like if a system would become non-functional if 1 part was not there, then there was never any beneficial random mutation that nature could have selected to lead up to that end state. There needs to be a beneficial function of some sort for nature to select throughout the process of Darwin evolution. That is what Behe is getting at. Otherwise , the entire system has to be assembled at once and obviously that sounds like intelligent design.

I don't know if it's because you're confused and seem to think that an evolutionary process has some kind of functional design goal or something, but you're incorrect that some function needs to be of direct benefit to be involved in the process of evolution. It simply needs to be not detrimental to survival and reproduction. That's it. Your lack of realization of that may be the cause of why you can't see concepts like 'scaffolding' or why you seem to be under the weird impression that a system losing one 'part' renders it completely useless in all contexts, particularly with the fact that the only context necessary for evolution is 'survival and reproduction', and that is so broad that it can be accomplished in damn near an infinite number of ways.

If a population of a species mutates light-sensitive cells, but they don't really do anything (i.e. not attached to the nervous system to allow for processing and utilizing this new sensitivity), then unless those light-sensitive cells result in a reduction in survival or reproduction, then that mutation will continue to be passed on. At that point it's basically a useless tool in the toolbox of surviving and reproducing, but it doesn't just 'disappear' because you can't think of a reason for it being there. It continues to propagate. Yes, it may eventually fall away from the gene pool, or it may be utilized in concert with other mutations or variations that come down the road.

Seriously man...how many damn examples of a system iteratively coming together and showcasing emergent functionality do you really need to get it into your thick skull that you are simply wrong that an entire system needs to be assembled at once? You really are just wrong.

Perhaps you need to look beyond just the Discovery Institute as your sole source of information.

"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."